In 1672, the Satnami, a sect concentrated in an area near Delhi, under the leadership of Bhirbhan and some Satnami, took over the administration of Narnaul, but they were eventually crushed upon Aurangzeb’s personal intervention with very few escaping alive. Soon afterwards the Afridi Pashtuns in the north­west also revolted, and Aurangzeb was forced to lead his army personally to Hasan Abdal to subdue them.

The Ahoms (the people of Shan community of Burma or Myanmar) were the kings who had established their kingdom in the basin of river Brahmaputra and made it impossible for the Mughals to conquer that area. The role of the economic factor was the leading factor of these rebellions. Emperor assigned a certain piece of land to the officials in lieu of their pay and also to enable them to defray the expenses over their troops on condition of their paying a sum to the Emperor out of the surplus revenue.

Such grants were called Jagirs. Since they were mainly grants of revenue out of which the holders (Who were usually Mansabdars) maintained their quota of troops for the Empire, the tendency was to fix revenue at the highest possible rate almost equal to the surplus produce. Even this high rate went on increasing with the passage of time.

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Under the circumstances the peasants were financially hit very hard. They were usually left with the barest minimum needed for supporting their lives. What added further to the hardships of the cultivators was the frequent transfer of the jagirs to different assignees.

The jagirdars held their jagirs at the pleasure of the Emperor. This constant insecurity of the tenure of office proved unfortunate in two ways. Firstly it offered little incentive to the holders to exert for alleviating the distress of their tenancy. Instead it led them to employ all possible tactics to extort money from the Peasantry.

Secondly, quite often at the time of the transfer the hard hit peasants of the same Jagir were pressurized to pay the same sum twice, first to the collectors of the outgoing jagirdar and then to those of the incoming one. Thus this system ended in a mad looting of the peasants by the rival collectors.

If the peasants refused to pay the revenue, very severe punishment was meted out to them. At times they were left with no other option than to sell their women, children and cattle, or to run away from their home to avoid extermination through-ill- treatment.